His condition. Somehow, Jasnah manages to make seasickness sound like leprosy.
"Are you worried about me?" The corner of his mouth turns up again. "You're the one with child, remember?" comes very quickly after. Never mind that said child is fictional—he wouldn't dream of doing anything to jeopardize his petit bébê. Geneviève is his world!!!
"I'll be all right," he says, being so brave about this. It's the perfect opportunity for his martyr complex to rear its head. "It won't be my first time sleeping on the floor." It'll be his first time getting jostled around on the floor as the ship sails, and he'll probably vomit a million times, but he'll deal with that issue when it arises.
"Besides," he adds with a half-shrug of his shoulder, "it would reflect poorly on my job performance if I let ma reine roll around on the floor all night." Sure, he technically hasn't begun the trial period, but— despite his casual congeniality, he's well aware that there's someone who matters here (Jasnah) and someone who doesn't (him).
Jasnah fixes him with a look that is equal parts disbelief and appraisal — as if she's just discovered that seasickness has somehow knocked loose whatever thin layer of self-preservation he normally possesses.
"Worried?" she repeats, crisp. "No. I am attempting to prevent our cover story from collapsing under the weight of your melodrama."
But the dryness in her voice carries an undertone — light, cool, unmistakably fond for a half-second. She glances pointedly at the narrow bed, then at the floorboards he's all but volunteering to die upon.
"Do not be absurd. You will take the bed."
She unlaces the satchel at her hip, pulling out the last of her folded papers, a charcoal pencil, and the worn map of the Shattered Plains — materials she clearly intends to pore over for hours.
"I will be working," she says simply, arranging the desk to her liking. "And I prefer to do so without stepping over a prone body every time the ship lurches."
She drops her gaze, setting her charcoal to parchment and making minor marks along a border.
“So take the bed, Verso,” she finishes, tone decisive and brooking no negotiation. “Your bravery is noted. But it's also unnecessary."
"Well, as long as it's noted," he says lightly, standing (a bit unsteadily) and removing his jacket, draping it somewhat haphazardly over one side of the bench. He shucks off his boots, too, although that's all he removes. Verso wouldn't usually stay so buttoned up in bed, but he's becoming more and more aware of Alethi propriety each day, and he'd rather sleep fully-dressed than offend her.
He doesn't verbally acknowledge his capitulation, but he wanders over to the little bed, perching on the edge of the mattress. As he watches her at work, his head tilts.
"You must plan to sleep eventually." She can't just stay up doing work all night, whatever that might entail.
Jasnah barely glances up from her papers when he speaks; the charcoal continues its deliberate sweep across the page, marking faultlines, contour shifts, hypothetical gates. Notational marks, not drawings. Her initial silence is not dismissal — just the inertia of a mind already three steps ahead of her hand.
"Eventually," she finally concedes. A single word, quiet, unembellished.
Her attention lingers on the map a moment longer before drifting toward him. Not enough to interrupt her work. Just enough to see him settling on the edge of the bed like a man preparing to weather a storm alone.
She returns to her notes.
There is something steadying about the work. Lines becoming meaning; meaning becoming plan. Something that makes the tight coil of apprehension around her ribs loosen by degrees. The familiar rhythm of analysis was always safer than the vulnerable in-between moments, and safer still on a ship where the walls breathe and sway like a creature in sleep. Where she knows she has precisely only one ally
And the truth — one she does not intend to elaborate on — is that she has never been one to surrender to unconsciousness easily. Especially not when the ground shifts beneath her feet. Especially not when someone may have wished her trapped in Kharbranth.
Her charcoal pauses mid-stroke.
"I don't sleep well on boats," she says simply.
No elaboration. No vulnerability. Just fact.
And the charcoal resumes its path, sure and unhurried, as though that were the end of the matter.
Oh. He's settled back on the mattress by the time she speaks again, staring up at the ceiling and trying (but failing) to focus on anything but the sway of the ship in the water. Jasnah had seemed quite done with the conversation, as if dismissing an irritating servant, so he'd figured that was the last time he'd hear from her for at least several hours.
Verso doesn't sit up, but he does shift onto his side so that he can look at her. Turned away from him, busy with whatever etchings she's making with that charcoal. There's not a single hint of vulnerability in her voice, but it must be a vulnerable thing to share, he thinks. Trouble sleeping is rarely good.
For a moment, he's quiet, considering what he should say. If she wants him to say anything at all, or if she only wanted to toss that out into the ether without having to receive a response. Finally, he lands on, "I'm an insomniac, too." Shared ground. People always feel better when they aren't alone.
Jasnah's charcoal stills just for a breath. The faintest disruption in the rhythm of her work. Not enough to register as surprise. Just... pause. Calculation.
She doesn't turn to look at him. She doesn't soften. But the air between them shifts, the way it does when she hears something she didn't expect and refuses to let it show.
Insomniac. Shared ground. Too much like an invitation.
She resumes her linework, steady as ever, but her voice, when it comes, is quieter — stripped of its usual certainty.
"Information is a currency," she says, aligning her ruler with almost exaggerated precision. "I won't spend it without assurance of return."
A small beat.
"So. No." But then, gentler than the refusal should allow: "You first."
Just Jasnah, weighing value, waiting to see if he can meet her where she's offered the smallest fraction of honesty.
Verso can't help but laugh. Jasnah, he's quickly learning, is ridiculous. Endlessly difficult about giving up even the smallest amount of ground. He shouldn't find it as charming as he does, and yet.
"So, I'm just supposed to donate my currency out of the goodness of my heart," he notes, although not unkindly. Just pointing out a little hypocrisy there. "Luckily, I'm feeling generous."
There is a pause, though, just long enough to be obvious that he's considering what to say next. How much to share. "I used to get these nightmares," he finally decides on. "But now I don't even get those. Most of the time, I don't dream at all." And when he does, it's rarely pleasant. "It's just this... oppressive void."
Pure nothingness. Like being trapped in a smothering dark cave. Or in a coffin underground.
Jasnah's charcoal gives off soft sounds. She works as she listens, as if one makes the other easier. Simpler.
"Void," she repeats, quietly.
The word lands in her ear with the wrong kind of resonance. Shades of a history she's studied, and a theology she disassembled, and a force she has seen — too closely — trying to devour the world from the inward out. There is an instinct, sharp and intellectual, to interrogate it. What kind of void? How literal? How dangerous?
But she resists. He is not Alethi. He is not invoking the Voidbringers. And she will not project her world's horrors onto his honesty. Her charcoal touches down again, resuming its meticulous path.
"That is... unpleasant. A mind accustomed to thought — even as a dream — does not easily tolerate nothingness." Another quiet beat, her eyes still on the parchment. "And I see why sleep doesn't come easily."
She finishes the line she was drawing, sets the charcoal aside, and finally turns her head just enough to regard him, eyes steady. Jasnah flicks her fingers together, like dismissing charcoal dust, before idly untying her makeshift headscarf. A slight inhale. She leans a hip against the worktable. A slight loosening of her posture. She rubs her gloved knuckles against the base of her ribs.
"Since you've shared your context..."
Context, and something honest. Whatever her test was, he passed it. Even if his answer stings of something both strange and familiar.
"My last journey by sea ended in an assassination attempt." A soft, critical hum. "I was abed at the time."
His own reasoning feels suddenly silly. Juvenile. Childish nightmares and then nothing at all. Unpleasant, as she'd said, but unpleasantness is simple enough to withstand. Her own barrier against sleep is much more real; it's paranoia, yes, but paranoia with basis in reality.
No wonder she'd been so irritated that their journey would be by sea.
The fear of death isn't one he can relate to, but it is one he understands. The Expeditioners would start out cheerful, but they'd always turn to melancholy and morosity before long. I don't want to die, they'd say. Don't let me die. He swallows down the bile in his throat.
It's clipped, clean, almost polite in the way closing a book can be polite.
"It wasn't the first attempt. Nor the last, if I'm correct about the Oathgate 'malfunctioning' back in Kharbranth."
But the attempt on the ship had been closest. Steel in the dark. Blood on wet planks. The sickening calculation of how much stormlight she could afford to burn, and when to burn it, so as to trick her assailants into thinking they'd succeeded. Quite apart from Jasnah's personal experience, her brother had been assassinated. And her father, too, years prior. Storms! The night the assassin in white came for King Gavilar, Jasnah had been busy meeting with a hired killer of her own: ensuring Liss that she would pay double for her to turn down any contracts against her family...apart from the contract Jasnah herself contemplated against her sister-in-law. Perhaps the paranoia also stems from a guilty conscious.
Jasnah actually looks haunted for a moment. She rakes bare fingers through her long, loose hair. Nose wrinkling briefly at the disorder. As if somehow she's more bothered by losing some of her controlled appearance to the disguise. The honesty might be easier than the muss.
Flatly: "Yeah. You know what they say about bottling up your feelings: you should definitely do it."
Verso is right there with her in the 'avoidance of uncomfortable emotions' camp, but he strongly believes that other people should talk about their feelings. He'd always been there for Alicia when the other girls at the academy were being cruel and exclusionary, and she'd sobbed soft, sweet tears into his shirt. I think there's something wrong with me, she'd cried, and everyone knows it. He'd even comforted Clea on occasion, in his own 'younger sibling' way, stomping his feet in protest when she'd practiced ballet until her feet bled in the pursuit of perfection.
But he doesn't push, just rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling again. He doesn't close his eyes, doubtful rest will come.
"What if we took turns?" In the bed. "I could keep watch for... would-be-assassins while you slept."
Jasnahs pauses just long enough to acknowledge that she heard him. Not long enough to be mistaken for actual hesitation.
"No."
The refusal is gentler this time — measured rather than cutting. She sets down the headscarf, aligning it with unnecessary precision before she speaks again.
"But," she adds, pinning his supine figure with a gaze from where she still stands, "offer again tomorrow night."
A faint lift of her brow — dry amused.
"After we see whether your stomach can survive standing upright for more than five minutes."
Slowly, almost reluctantly, dhe returns to her notes, but her voice stays thawed at the edges, just a touch.
"I appreciate the intent. Truly. But tonight, you need the bed far more than I do. Even if you do not sleep you might as well rest."
It's a no, but it's not a no forever, and with Jasnah one has to consider that a win. So, with an almost imperceptible upward tilt of his lips: "All right." A beat. "But you should know I'm a really good bodyguard."
Check out his resume. He's got decades of experience being a meat shield.
But he doesn't bother Jasnah after that, having gotten the hint by now that she prefers not to be interrupted during work. (Giving a real 'Versos are to be seen and not heard' vibe, but that's okay.) He probably irritates her in the way he tosses and turns in the bed for what is quite literally hours before he eventually manages to drift off into a very light sleep.
There's no mirror for him to spend thirty minutes in front of—quelle horreur!—so he has no choice but to report to the mess deck for breakfast with bedhead. He sits at the rickety, nailed-to-the-floor table and picks at his hardtack biscuit, appetite always diminished from poor mood but particularly nonexistent now; he's still a little queasy.
Torreth settles down in front of them, dropping another biscuit in front of Jasnah—"You're eating for two!" he says with a wink—before trapping Verso in a conversation he'd be happy to have if he weren't still vaguely ill. It turns out that Torreth is a family man after all, with two grown children and a sadly deceased wife.
"Speaking of wives— yours looks so familiar," Torreth notes.
"Just one of those faces, I guess," he says in return.
"No, I could swear." To Jasnah: "What did you say your name was again?"
Not steadily — no, even she isn't immune to the ship's ceaseless rocking. At some point, forehead resting on the crook of her arm, she'd slipped into a brief, unwilling doze. The kind where the charcoal smudges her palm and then her cheek. And her shoulder twitches once in surprise when gravity shifts. She'd woken immediately, of course — annoyed, posture snapping back into precision, as if sleep were a lapse in discipline rather than a human need. Before leaving the cabin, she secures her loose, sea-salted hair into a single plait.
When she sits now at the bolted-down table in the mess, she is composed, alert... and faintly irritated by Torreth's enthusiasm. Her eyes flick to the extra biscuit like it's an insult to mathematics. Eating for two. Storms, she should never have let Verso name that imaginary child.
And speaking of irritants — she catches sight of Verso's hair, unruly and stubborn from a restless night. It tugs at the corner of her mouth, a small treacherous twitch she smothers instantly. She will not comment on his bedhead. She will not reach out and smooth an errant piece with two stern, commanding fingertips.
And Jasnah doesn't even blink when asked for her name. She's already folding the lie into place. Funny how the truth matters less with some than with others.
"Hesina," she says smoothly, borrowing the name of Urithiru's surgeon's wife. A fine light-eyed name, even if it lacked near-symmetry. A perfectly provincial name. Respectable. Mild. Leagues away from the heretic Jasnah Kholin.
She lifts the biscuit — mostly to avoid looking at Torreth's knowing wink — and breaks it cleanly in half.
"Tell us of your children, Captain." She aims to distract him. Hopeful that he'll take the bait. Mildly concerned that he'll continue to press. "Do they also sail like their father? I know Theylenah is famous for their naval culture."
Verso files away Hesina somewhere in his mind; inevitably, he's going to need to know the fake-name of his fake-wife. Or maybe he can just get away with calling her chouchou forever. Renoir had called Maman a great many things, but very scarcely Aline. It had always been some poetic epithet or another. My stars, my sky, my world. Verso had frequently rolled his eyes.
"My son, yes," Torreth says, happy to talk about his children. "A very accomplished sailor, at that. My daughter, though— my wife was a more traditional sort. Believed women were more suited for gentler things."
"I think our daughter could be a sailor," Verso pipes up. "If she wanted."
Jasnah feels the warning bell before the words have even fully left his mouth.
Our daughter could be a sailor. Damnation. On a Theylan ship. Spoken to a good Vorin man raised in a culture where progressive is a polite word for treasonously strange.
Her response is immediate. She lowera gloved hand beneath the table and settles confidently on Verso's knee. She squeezes. Not harsh. Not panicked. Just firm enough to say stop talking.
Outward, she smiles — warm, demure, perfectly conventional.
"Gemheart," she murmurs, tone honeyed with too much domestic fondness, "you do spoil our children with possibilities."
A second, harder squeeze of his knee — a reinforcement of her displeasure — as she turns that same smile to Torreth.
"But he only means she should be encouraged to find an art suited to her talents. Whether that is the scribe's desk or the artefabrian's workshop or any of the dozens of respectable pursuits she might choose."
Torreth harrumphs approvingly into his biscuit. "Hmph. Respectable pursuits. Not all this nonsense about women with Shardblades." Another grunt, as if the very idea pains him. "What's next — women captains? Women duelists?"
Jasnah doesn't blink. She simply pours all three of them another cup of weak tea with the serene poise of a woman who has definitely not soulcast men like him into pillars of smoked quartz.
"Almighty willing, Captain," she says smoothly, "our daughter will grow into a bright and capable woman."
Jasnah doesn't remove her hand. It's as if she's waiting for confirmation that he'll behave before she dares withdraw.
Ah. He'd thought Jasnah would approve of him eschewing the inefficient gender divide, but not so. Her hand lands on his knee, a warning pressure; he raises an eyebrow, surprised by just how tense the conversation was made by a simple 'my fictional daughter can do whatever she wants'. Jasnah has told him several times of their cultural standards, yes, but it's one thing to hear and another thing to actually witness it.
Verso pauses. Looks at the hand on his knee. Tries not to enjoy it, fails a little. Look, it's been a really, really long time.
"...Right," he says after a protracted moment passes. "Guess I misspoke. Being at sea has me rather out of sorts."
He covers her hand with his, piano-callused fingers wrapping around to gently separate her palm from his knee. I'll behave, essentially. He places her hand on the wood of the bench between them before withdrawing and taking a sip of shitty tea. Mmm.
Jasnah allows him to lift her hand because to resist would draw attention. And because she knows she committed the first physical infraction. But the moment his fingers curve around the leather contour of her glove, something in her stills.
Most people (regardless of gender) would avoid touching a woman's safehand entirely. She knows academically that her safehand hand means little or less to him, but she can't help the curious thrill when he handles it with that much nonchalance. The touch is startling in its normalcy.
She lets him place her hand back on the bench, but her fingertips curl slightly. Folding under her palm.
She's silent for a breath. Two. Then breaks off a piece of the biscuit and continues to eat. It's dry and mediocre and faintly stale, but politeness is a kind of armour, and she wears it effortlessly. She chews, swallows, and wonders whether she should feign morning sickness to avoid finishing the meal
"Captain," she asks lightly, "does your route keep us within sight of the coastline or will we be in open sea for long stretches?"
A perfect, harmless question.
One that prompts Torreth to launch into a long, proud explanation of his sailing tactics — effectively burying the moment, smoothing the social water. Or so she hopes.
By the time Torreth finishes his somewhat braggadocious lecture on sailing, Verso still has the majority of his biscuit left on his plate. It feels selfish to waste it, so he assures Torreth that he's saving it for tomorrow's breakfast, effectively condemning himself to slowly eating this fucking biscuit over the course of 5 days. Whatever—he'll live. He always does.
Once most of the crew has disappeared up onto the main deck, he glances Jasnah's way.
"Sorry. You told me, but I didn't realize just how strongly people felt." He'd just thought of sweet Alicia being told that there was anything in the world that she couldn't do, and it had irritated him. He leaves it at that, though, figuring that she's probably eager to move on from it. "So— more work to do?"
It's almost instinctive, the way he infuses his voice with just a little bit of hope that she'll say 'no' in order to encourage her to do just that. Unconscious manipulation.
Edited (i loveee the word majority apparently) 2025-11-21 22:55 (UTC)
Jasnah brushes the crumbs from her fingertips with a precision that borders on dismissive grace. When she looks at him, there's no irritation — only the cool steadiness of someone who has already refiled the entire encounter under Lessons: Cultural, Bears Repetition.
"Yes, I told you already." She says quietly. A whisper for Verso alone. "But you simply hadn't yet witnessed the depth of conviction found outside Urithiru. Difficult though it may be to believe, the tower is progressive compared to the other Vorin nations."
Not an accusation. Just fact, delivered with the calm of someone who's lived under those convictions her entire life. But who also believes they can be dismantled, albeit thoughtfully.
She rises from the bench, smoothing the shapeless vest as though it were embroidered silk.
"And yes. There is more to do — just not at the desk."
Her gaze shifts toward the narrow stairs leading up to the main deck. There's a flicker of something like anticipation beneath her composed surface.
"I want to speak with the sailors. Men who traverse the seas hear things — rumors of strange storms, sightings of spren, patterns in trade and weather. Sometimes truths slip through in the spaces between superstition."
She lets that settle, then adds, more pointedly: "And I would like to get a sense of Torreth's temperament. Whether this vessel is as safe as it appears."
Her eyes return to him — assessing.
"You're welcome to join me," she says, then adds with a faint tilt of her head, "if you believe your stomach won't betray you again."
The implication is gentle teasing But there's also genuine allowance. He asked if she had more work. She's giving him the chance to be part of it. Otherwise, she'll cut him loose for the day.
He's absolutely not confident that his stomach won't betray him again considering that he's felt vaguely queasy the whole time they've been sitting here, but Verso doesn't dare share that.
Wry: "I was more hoping for a rousing game of cards, or maybe tic-tac-toe." There's humor in his tone, but there's a kernel of truth in that joke, and his disappointment that there's more work ahead is mostly but not entirely imperceptible. There's been a lot of darkness in his life, yes, but there's also been a lot of boredom, and some of his most pleasant memories were made trying to stave that boredom off. Giving Monoco an experimental haircut (a success in his eyes, at least) or trying to teach Esquie to play chess (doomed to fail from the beginning; his giant hands were too big to properly move the pieces). It would have been nice to pass the time the way that he used to.
But he can also understand her paranoia—better than ever now that she's shared the assassination attempt at sea with him—and sympathize with her desire to do something about it. It's the pragmatic thing to do, chatting sailors up and seeing what they reveal. He'd offer to do it alone, but as has been made abundantly clear by the conversation of this morning, he lacks a nuanced view of Rosharan culture. It stands to reason that he might miss one of those truths slipping in, overlook something of importance.
"But it'd be a poor husband who let you talk to handsome sailors all alone, I think."
Jasnah opens her mouth to correct him — handsome? — then closes it again. A flicker crosses her face, subtle as a ripple in still water: not defensiveness — simply mild, private confusion at the idea that any of the crew qualifies as aesthetically remarkable. She glances, just once, toward a knot of sailors tightening rigging on the far deck.
Objectively? Strong, weathered, broadly built men, some with striking features. But Jasnah’s mind sorts them with the same pragmatic efficiency she applies to ledgers. Competent, likely; handsome, irrelevant.
She lets the matter pass. "Then you'd better come along," she says simply.
The next hours are spent drifting from one end of the deck to the other, speaking to sailors coming off watch or stowing equipment. Jasnah organizes them the way she organizes sources in an archive: a Thaylen man with a scar across his jaw, who swears he saw a santhid breach once and calls it a sign of good luck; a young darkeyed swabbie frightened of unusual spren that appeared during the last storm; an older helmsman who recounts rumors of strange tides and ships that vanished into fog without ever returning. Jasnah listens patiently, gently sifting superstition from pattern... ultimately, there isn't anything too odd about a woman behaving scholarly.
By noon, she's pieced together a compass of oddities: sightings of deepwater spren, shifts in migration patterns, and a rumbling undercurrent of something that feels...off. Not proof. But enough to murmur to Ivory about later.
Near the top of the afternoon, when the sun has climbed enough to warm the deck but not yet force them into shade, Jasnah finds herself standing alone with Verso at a quiet stretch of railing near the stern. The sea stretches wide and glittering behind them; most of the crew is gathered forward, repairing a torn sail.
Jasnah leans an elbow lightly against the rail. The wind tugs the edge of her scarf. The ship hums beneath their feet. When she speaks, her voice is quieter. Contemplative, edged with a rare curiosity because it seems to exist without agenda.
"What is your honest opinion of my planet?"
She keeps her eyes on the horizon. The faintest line of tension at the corner of her mouth. So often, that's how she talks about the topic. Not simply other worlds, but planets.
"There are so many others. Whole other societies. I know that now. So I want to hear how mine seems...to someone with the vantage to compare."
Verso is leaning over the railing, too, when she asks her question. Facing the sea rather than the ship, eyes on the horizon to quell any lingering nausea. It works, sort of. He hasn't thrown up yet, anyway.
"You want my opinion?" he asks, a little surprised. He'd expected her to consider his opinion on Roshar to be uneducated at best. Ignorant. There's clearly so much he doesn't yet understand about this place.
But she's asking, so he considers it. "I think—"
It's strange. Foreign. Difficult to understand, at times. He'd always felt a background buzz of wrongness in Lumière, but this is different. He knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he doesn't belong here. Despite that, it's wonderful. He's felt a sense of unburdenedness here that he's never felt before, ever. Admittedly, any other world would have done that for him, but he finds himself somewhat relieved that it was this one.
"I think I'm lucky to have landed in your lap." Metaphorically, dieu merci.
Jasnah doesn't look at him when she answers. She keeps her gaze pinned to the horizon, its hard, merciless line.
"Verso."
A single word. Soft but unmistakably corrective.
"That was not an opinion of my world.That was an opinion of your circumstance within it."
She speaks with an exacting and sharp clarity. The kind she uses when a junior scholar answers the question they wished had been asked, not the one that was. Only then does she shift her attention to him, her expression clouded but undeniably intent.
"I asked because I want to know how Roshar appears to someone who does not take its highs and lows for granted." A pause, barely longer than a breath. "Someone unattached."
Her gloved fingers trace the railing absently, as though drawing constellations on the iron.
"I have heard stories," she admits, voice quiet enough that the wind nearly swallows it. "Not just the ones you've told me about Lumière. But other planets. Other societies. Scadrial. Nalthis. Sel."
The words land gently — but carries weight. She watches whether they mean anything to him. They are planets she thinks might be stronger than hers. Or hungrier. She lets out a slow exhale, a controlled release of breath that doesn't quite mask the tension beneath it.
In the end, can she even trust the source of those stories? After all, Hoid had once openly confessed that he would let Roshar burn if it meant sparing the rest of the Cosmere. And Jasnah can't actually blame him. Hasn't that been her philosophy, too? Always act in light of the greatest good. No matter what (or who) you have to sacrifice to do so.
"Oh, well, you should have told me there was a wrong way to share my opinion."
It's sarcastic, but not actually irritated. It's just a little silly— she'd asked for his opinion, and then got annoyed when he didn't give it in the exact way that she wanted. He turns to shoot her a Look™, eyebrows raised and head slightly tilted.
"If you're looking for an unbiased assessment, I'm afraid you'll have to look further. My opinion of your world is inherently linked to my circumstances in it."
He's foreign, yes, and has a different perspective, but that doesn't make him any more impartial. If he'd come to this place and had nothing, if Jasnah weren't interested enough in him to befriend—or whatever she might call it—him on the basis of gaining more information, his opinion would be quite different. But obviously, personal preferences aren't what she's looking for. He thinks about the names she just rattled off, then furrows his brow.
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"Are you worried about me?" The corner of his mouth turns up again. "You're the one with child, remember?" comes very quickly after. Never mind that said child is fictional—he wouldn't dream of doing anything to jeopardize his petit bébê. Geneviève is his world!!!
"I'll be all right," he says, being so brave about this. It's the perfect opportunity for his martyr complex to rear its head. "It won't be my first time sleeping on the floor." It'll be his first time getting jostled around on the floor as the ship sails, and he'll probably vomit a million times, but he'll deal with that issue when it arises.
"Besides," he adds with a half-shrug of his shoulder, "it would reflect poorly on my job performance if I let ma reine roll around on the floor all night." Sure, he technically hasn't begun the trial period, but— despite his casual congeniality, he's well aware that there's someone who matters here (Jasnah) and someone who doesn't (him).
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"Worried?" she repeats, crisp. "No. I am attempting to prevent our cover story from collapsing under the weight of your melodrama."
But the dryness in her voice carries an undertone — light, cool, unmistakably fond for a half-second. She glances pointedly at the narrow bed, then at the floorboards he's all but volunteering to die upon.
"Do not be absurd. You will take the bed."
She unlaces the satchel at her hip, pulling out the last of her folded papers, a charcoal pencil, and the worn map of the Shattered Plains — materials she clearly intends to pore over for hours.
"I will be working," she says simply, arranging the desk to her liking. "And I prefer to do so without stepping over a prone body every time the ship lurches."
She drops her gaze, setting her charcoal to parchment and making minor marks along a border.
“So take the bed, Verso,” she finishes, tone decisive and brooking no negotiation. “Your bravery is noted. But it's also unnecessary."
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He doesn't verbally acknowledge his capitulation, but he wanders over to the little bed, perching on the edge of the mattress. As he watches her at work, his head tilts.
"You must plan to sleep eventually." She can't just stay up doing work all night, whatever that might entail.
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"Eventually," she finally concedes. A single word, quiet, unembellished.
Her attention lingers on the map a moment longer before drifting toward him. Not enough to interrupt her work. Just enough to see him settling on the edge of the bed like a man preparing to weather a storm alone.
She returns to her notes.
There is something steadying about the work. Lines becoming meaning; meaning becoming plan. Something that makes the tight coil of apprehension around her ribs loosen by degrees. The familiar rhythm of analysis was always safer than the vulnerable in-between moments, and safer still on a ship where the walls breathe and sway like a creature in sleep. Where she knows she has precisely only one ally
And the truth — one she does not intend to elaborate on — is that she has never been one to surrender to unconsciousness easily. Especially not when the ground shifts beneath her feet. Especially not when someone may have wished her trapped in Kharbranth.
Her charcoal pauses mid-stroke.
"I don't sleep well on boats," she says simply.
No elaboration. No vulnerability. Just fact.
And the charcoal resumes its path, sure and unhurried, as though that were the end of the matter.
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Verso doesn't sit up, but he does shift onto his side so that he can look at her. Turned away from him, busy with whatever etchings she's making with that charcoal. There's not a single hint of vulnerability in her voice, but it must be a vulnerable thing to share, he thinks. Trouble sleeping is rarely good.
For a moment, he's quiet, considering what he should say. If she wants him to say anything at all, or if she only wanted to toss that out into the ether without having to receive a response. Finally, he lands on, "I'm an insomniac, too." Shared ground. People always feel better when they aren't alone.
"I'll share my reason if you share yours."
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She doesn't turn to look at him. She doesn't soften. But the air between them shifts, the way it does when she hears something she didn't expect and refuses to let it show.
Insomniac. Shared ground. Too much like an invitation.
She resumes her linework, steady as ever, but her voice, when it comes, is quieter — stripped of its usual certainty.
"Information is a currency," she says, aligning her ruler with almost exaggerated precision. "I won't spend it without assurance of return."
A small beat.
"So. No." But then, gentler than the refusal should allow: "You first."
Just Jasnah, weighing value, waiting to see if he can meet her where she's offered the smallest fraction of honesty.
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"So, I'm just supposed to donate my currency out of the goodness of my heart," he notes, although not unkindly. Just pointing out a little hypocrisy there. "Luckily, I'm feeling generous."
There is a pause, though, just long enough to be obvious that he's considering what to say next. How much to share. "I used to get these nightmares," he finally decides on. "But now I don't even get those. Most of the time, I don't dream at all." And when he does, it's rarely pleasant. "It's just this... oppressive void."
Pure nothingness. Like being trapped in a smothering dark cave. Or in a coffin underground.
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"Void," she repeats, quietly.
The word lands in her ear with the wrong kind of resonance. Shades of a history she's studied, and a theology she disassembled, and a force she has seen — too closely — trying to devour the world from the inward out. There is an instinct, sharp and intellectual, to interrogate it. What kind of void? How literal? How dangerous?
But she resists. He is not Alethi. He is not invoking the Voidbringers. And she will not project her world's horrors onto his honesty. Her charcoal touches down again, resuming its meticulous path.
"That is... unpleasant. A mind accustomed to thought — even as a dream — does not easily tolerate nothingness." Another quiet beat, her eyes still on the parchment. "And I see why sleep doesn't come easily."
She finishes the line she was drawing, sets the charcoal aside, and finally turns her head just enough to regard him, eyes steady. Jasnah flicks her fingers together, like dismissing charcoal dust, before idly untying her makeshift headscarf. A slight inhale. She leans a hip against the worktable. A slight loosening of her posture. She rubs her gloved knuckles against the base of her ribs.
"Since you've shared your context..."
Context, and something honest. Whatever her test was, he passed it. Even if his answer stings of something both strange and familiar.
"My last journey by sea ended in an assassination attempt." A soft, critical hum. "I was abed at the time."
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His own reasoning feels suddenly silly. Juvenile. Childish nightmares and then nothing at all. Unpleasant, as she'd said, but unpleasantness is simple enough to withstand. Her own barrier against sleep is much more real; it's paranoia, yes, but paranoia with basis in reality.
No wonder she'd been so irritated that their journey would be by sea.
The fear of death isn't one he can relate to, but it is one he understands. The Expeditioners would start out cheerful, but they'd always turn to melancholy and morosity before long. I don't want to die, they'd say. Don't let me die. He swallows down the bile in his throat.
"Want to talk about it?"
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It's clipped, clean, almost polite in the way closing a book can be polite.
"It wasn't the first attempt. Nor the last, if I'm correct about the Oathgate 'malfunctioning' back in Kharbranth."
But the attempt on the ship had been closest. Steel in the dark. Blood on wet planks. The sickening calculation of how much stormlight she could afford to burn, and when to burn it, so as to trick her assailants into thinking they'd succeeded. Quite apart from Jasnah's personal experience, her brother had been assassinated. And her father, too, years prior. Storms! The night the assassin in white came for King Gavilar, Jasnah had been busy meeting with a hired killer of her own: ensuring Liss that she would pay double for her to turn down any contracts against her family...apart from the contract Jasnah herself contemplated against her sister-in-law. Perhaps the paranoia also stems from a guilty conscious.
Jasnah actually looks haunted for a moment. She rakes bare fingers through her long, loose hair. Nose wrinkling briefly at the disorder. As if somehow she's more bothered by losing some of her controlled appearance to the disguise. The honesty might be easier than the muss.
"Rest. There's no merit in reopening old wounds."
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Verso is right there with her in the 'avoidance of uncomfortable emotions' camp, but he strongly believes that other people should talk about their feelings. He'd always been there for Alicia when the other girls at the academy were being cruel and exclusionary, and she'd sobbed soft, sweet tears into his shirt. I think there's something wrong with me, she'd cried, and everyone knows it. He'd even comforted Clea on occasion, in his own 'younger sibling' way, stomping his feet in protest when she'd practiced ballet until her feet bled in the pursuit of perfection.
But he doesn't push, just rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling again. He doesn't close his eyes, doubtful rest will come.
"What if we took turns?" In the bed. "I could keep watch for... would-be-assassins while you slept."
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"No."
The refusal is gentler this time — measured rather than cutting. She sets down the headscarf, aligning it with unnecessary precision before she speaks again.
"But," she adds, pinning his supine figure with a gaze from where she still stands, "offer again tomorrow night."
A faint lift of her brow — dry amused.
"After we see whether your stomach can survive standing upright for more than five minutes."
Slowly, almost reluctantly, dhe returns to her notes, but her voice stays thawed at the edges, just a touch.
"I appreciate the intent. Truly. But tonight, you need the bed far more than I do. Even if you do not sleep you might as well rest."
Another beat. Quieter.
"And I prefer my guards steady on their feet."
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Check out his resume. He's got decades of experience being a meat shield.
But he doesn't bother Jasnah after that, having gotten the hint by now that she prefers not to be interrupted during work. (Giving a real 'Versos are to be seen and not heard' vibe, but that's okay.) He probably irritates her in the way he tosses and turns in the bed for what is quite literally hours before he eventually manages to drift off into a very light sleep.
There's no mirror for him to spend thirty minutes in front of—quelle horreur!—so he has no choice but to report to the mess deck for breakfast with bedhead. He sits at the rickety, nailed-to-the-floor table and picks at his hardtack biscuit, appetite always diminished from poor mood but particularly nonexistent now; he's still a little queasy.
Torreth settles down in front of them, dropping another biscuit in front of Jasnah—"You're eating for two!" he says with a wink—before trapping Verso in a conversation he'd be happy to have if he weren't still vaguely ill. It turns out that Torreth is a family man after all, with two grown children and a sadly deceased wife.
"Speaking of wives— yours looks so familiar," Torreth notes.
"Just one of those faces, I guess," he says in return.
"No, I could swear." To Jasnah: "What did you say your name was again?"
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Not steadily — no, even she isn't immune to the ship's ceaseless rocking. At some point, forehead resting on the crook of her arm, she'd slipped into a brief, unwilling doze. The kind where the charcoal smudges her palm and then her cheek. And her shoulder twitches once in surprise when gravity shifts. She'd woken immediately, of course — annoyed, posture snapping back into precision, as if sleep were a lapse in discipline rather than a human need. Before leaving the cabin, she secures her loose, sea-salted hair into a single plait.
When she sits now at the bolted-down table in the mess, she is composed, alert... and faintly irritated by Torreth's enthusiasm. Her eyes flick to the extra biscuit like it's an insult to mathematics. Eating for two. Storms, she should never have let Verso name that imaginary child.
And speaking of irritants — she catches sight of Verso's hair, unruly and stubborn from a restless night. It tugs at the corner of her mouth, a small treacherous twitch she smothers instantly. She will not comment on his bedhead. She will not reach out and smooth an errant piece with two stern, commanding fingertips.
And Jasnah doesn't even blink when asked for her name. She's already folding the lie into place. Funny how the truth matters less with some than with others.
"Hesina," she says smoothly, borrowing the name of Urithiru's surgeon's wife. A fine light-eyed name, even if it lacked near-symmetry. A perfectly provincial name. Respectable. Mild. Leagues away from the heretic Jasnah Kholin.
She lifts the biscuit — mostly to avoid looking at Torreth's knowing wink — and breaks it cleanly in half.
"Tell us of your children, Captain." She aims to distract him. Hopeful that he'll take the bait. Mildly concerned that he'll continue to press. "Do they also sail like their father? I know Theylenah is famous for their naval culture."
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"My son, yes," Torreth says, happy to talk about his children. "A very accomplished sailor, at that. My daughter, though— my wife was a more traditional sort. Believed women were more suited for gentler things."
"I think our daughter could be a sailor," Verso pipes up. "If she wanted."
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Our daughter could be a sailor. Damnation. On a Theylan ship. Spoken to a good Vorin man raised in a culture where progressive is a polite word for treasonously strange.
Her response is immediate. She lowera gloved hand beneath the table and settles confidently on Verso's knee. She squeezes. Not harsh. Not panicked. Just firm enough to say stop talking.
Outward, she smiles — warm, demure, perfectly conventional.
"Gemheart," she murmurs, tone honeyed with too much domestic fondness, "you do spoil our children with possibilities."
A second, harder squeeze of his knee — a reinforcement of her displeasure — as she turns that same smile to Torreth.
"But he only means she should be encouraged to find an art suited to her talents. Whether that is the scribe's desk or the artefabrian's workshop or any of the dozens of respectable pursuits she might choose."
Torreth harrumphs approvingly into his biscuit. "Hmph. Respectable pursuits. Not all this nonsense about women with Shardblades." Another grunt, as if the very idea pains him. "What's next — women captains? Women duelists?"
Jasnah doesn't blink. She simply pours all three of them another cup of weak tea with the serene poise of a woman who has definitely not soulcast men like him into pillars of smoked quartz.
"Almighty willing, Captain," she says smoothly, "our daughter will grow into a bright and capable woman."
Jasnah doesn't remove her hand. It's as if she's waiting for confirmation that he'll behave before she dares withdraw.
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Verso pauses. Looks at the hand on his knee. Tries not to enjoy it, fails a little. Look, it's been a really, really long time.
"...Right," he says after a protracted moment passes. "Guess I misspoke. Being at sea has me rather out of sorts."
He covers her hand with his, piano-callused fingers wrapping around to gently separate her palm from his knee. I'll behave, essentially. He places her hand on the wood of the bench between them before withdrawing and taking a sip of shitty tea. Mmm.
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Most people (regardless of gender) would avoid touching a woman's safehand entirely. She knows academically that her safehand hand means little or less to him, but she can't help the curious thrill when he handles it with that much nonchalance. The touch is startling in its normalcy.
She lets him place her hand back on the bench, but her fingertips curl slightly. Folding under her palm.
She's silent for a breath. Two. Then breaks off a piece of the biscuit and continues to eat. It's dry and mediocre and faintly stale, but politeness is a kind of armour, and she wears it effortlessly. She chews, swallows, and wonders whether she should feign morning sickness to avoid finishing the meal
"Captain," she asks lightly, "does your route keep us within sight of the coastline or will we be in open sea for long stretches?"
A perfect, harmless question.
One that prompts Torreth to launch into a long, proud explanation of his sailing tactics — effectively burying the moment, smoothing the social water. Or so she hopes.
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Once most of the crew has disappeared up onto the main deck, he glances Jasnah's way.
"Sorry. You told me, but I didn't realize just how strongly people felt." He'd just thought of sweet Alicia being told that there was anything in the world that she couldn't do, and it had irritated him. He leaves it at that, though, figuring that she's probably eager to move on from it. "So— more work to do?"
It's almost instinctive, the way he infuses his voice with just a little bit of hope that she'll say 'no' in order to encourage her to do just that. Unconscious manipulation.
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"Yes, I told you already." She says quietly. A whisper for Verso alone. "But you simply hadn't yet witnessed the depth of conviction found outside Urithiru. Difficult though it may be to believe, the tower is progressive compared to the other Vorin nations."
Not an accusation. Just fact, delivered with the calm of someone who's lived under those convictions her entire life. But who also believes they can be dismantled, albeit thoughtfully.
She rises from the bench, smoothing the shapeless vest as though it were embroidered silk.
"And yes. There is more to do — just not at the desk."
Her gaze shifts toward the narrow stairs leading up to the main deck. There's a flicker of something like anticipation beneath her composed surface.
"I want to speak with the sailors. Men who traverse the seas hear things — rumors of strange storms, sightings of spren, patterns in trade and weather. Sometimes truths slip through in the spaces between superstition."
She lets that settle, then adds, more pointedly: "And I would like to get a sense of Torreth's temperament. Whether this vessel is as safe as it appears."
Her eyes return to him — assessing.
"You're welcome to join me," she says, then adds with a faint tilt of her head, "if you believe your stomach won't betray you again."
The implication is gentle teasing But there's also genuine allowance. He asked if she had more work. She's giving him the chance to be part of it. Otherwise, she'll cut him loose for the day.
tosses u a midnight before bed tag.......
Wry: "I was more hoping for a rousing game of cards, or maybe tic-tac-toe." There's humor in his tone, but there's a kernel of truth in that joke, and his disappointment that there's more work ahead is mostly but not entirely imperceptible. There's been a lot of darkness in his life, yes, but there's also been a lot of boredom, and some of his most pleasant memories were made trying to stave that boredom off. Giving Monoco an experimental haircut (a success in his eyes, at least) or trying to teach Esquie to play chess (doomed to fail from the beginning; his giant hands were too big to properly move the pieces). It would have been nice to pass the time the way that he used to.
But he can also understand her paranoia—better than ever now that she's shared the assassination attempt at sea with him—and sympathize with her desire to do something about it. It's the pragmatic thing to do, chatting sailors up and seeing what they reveal. He'd offer to do it alone, but as has been made abundantly clear by the conversation of this morning, he lacks a nuanced view of Rosharan culture. It stands to reason that he might miss one of those truths slipping in, overlook something of importance.
"But it'd be a poor husband who let you talk to handsome sailors all alone, I think."
delightful.
Objectively? Strong, weathered, broadly built men, some with striking features. But Jasnah’s mind sorts them with the same pragmatic efficiency she applies to ledgers. Competent, likely; handsome, irrelevant.
She lets the matter pass. "Then you'd better come along," she says simply.
The next hours are spent drifting from one end of the deck to the other, speaking to sailors coming off watch or stowing equipment. Jasnah organizes them the way she organizes sources in an archive: a Thaylen man with a scar across his jaw, who swears he saw a santhid breach once and calls it a sign of good luck; a young darkeyed swabbie frightened of unusual spren that appeared during the last storm; an older helmsman who recounts rumors of strange tides and ships that vanished into fog without ever returning. Jasnah listens patiently, gently sifting superstition from pattern... ultimately, there isn't anything too odd about a woman behaving scholarly.
By noon, she's pieced together a compass of oddities: sightings of deepwater spren, shifts in migration patterns, and a rumbling undercurrent of something that feels...off. Not proof. But enough to murmur to Ivory about later.
Near the top of the afternoon, when the sun has climbed enough to warm the deck but not yet force them into shade, Jasnah finds herself standing alone with Verso at a quiet stretch of railing near the stern. The sea stretches wide and glittering behind them; most of the crew is gathered forward, repairing a torn sail.
Jasnah leans an elbow lightly against the rail. The wind tugs the edge of her scarf. The ship hums beneath their feet. When she speaks, her voice is quieter. Contemplative, edged with a rare curiosity because it seems to exist without agenda.
"What is your honest opinion of my planet?"
She keeps her eyes on the horizon. The faintest line of tension at the corner of her mouth. So often, that's how she talks about the topic. Not simply other worlds, but planets.
"There are so many others. Whole other societies. I know that now. So I want to hear how mine seems...to someone with the vantage to compare."
Wit was always ever-so-withholding.
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"You want my opinion?" he asks, a little surprised. He'd expected her to consider his opinion on Roshar to be uneducated at best. Ignorant. There's clearly so much he doesn't yet understand about this place.
But she's asking, so he considers it. "I think—"
It's strange. Foreign. Difficult to understand, at times. He'd always felt a background buzz of wrongness in Lumière, but this is different. He knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he doesn't belong here. Despite that, it's wonderful. He's felt a sense of unburdenedness here that he's never felt before, ever. Admittedly, any other world would have done that for him, but he finds himself somewhat relieved that it was this one.
"I think I'm lucky to have landed in your lap." Metaphorically, dieu merci.
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"Verso."
A single word. Soft but unmistakably corrective.
"That was not an opinion of my world.That was an opinion of your circumstance within it."
She speaks with an exacting and sharp clarity. The kind she uses when a junior scholar answers the question they wished had been asked, not the one that was. Only then does she shift her attention to him, her expression clouded but undeniably intent.
"I asked because I want to know how Roshar appears to someone who does not take its highs and lows for granted." A pause, barely longer than a breath. "Someone unattached."
Her gloved fingers trace the railing absently, as though drawing constellations on the iron.
"I have heard stories," she admits, voice quiet enough that the wind nearly swallows it. "Not just the ones you've told me about Lumière. But other planets. Other societies. Scadrial. Nalthis. Sel."
The words land gently — but carries weight. She watches whether they mean anything to him. They are planets she thinks might be stronger than hers. Or hungrier. She lets out a slow exhale, a controlled release of breath that doesn't quite mask the tension beneath it.
In the end, can she even trust the source of those stories? After all, Hoid had once openly confessed that he would let Roshar burn if it meant sparing the rest of the Cosmere. And Jasnah can't actually blame him. Hasn't that been her philosophy, too? Always act in light of the greatest good. No matter what (or who) you have to sacrifice to do so.
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It's sarcastic, but not actually irritated. It's just a little silly— she'd asked for his opinion, and then got annoyed when he didn't give it in the exact way that she wanted. He turns to shoot her a Look™, eyebrows raised and head slightly tilted.
"If you're looking for an unbiased assessment, I'm afraid you'll have to look further. My opinion of your world is inherently linked to my circumstances in it."
He's foreign, yes, and has a different perspective, but that doesn't make him any more impartial. If he'd come to this place and had nothing, if Jasnah weren't interested enough in him to befriend—or whatever she might call it—him on the basis of gaining more information, his opinion would be quite different. But obviously, personal preferences aren't what she's looking for. He thinks about the names she just rattled off, then furrows his brow.
"Are you worried Roshar doesn't measure up?"
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i lied, sends this tag in another direction
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a short but very meaningful tag
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my turn for a short but effective tag.
mom said it's my turn
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